Learning Welsh

 Classes have been going for a month now, two hours a week and lots of bits of work on it in between. Each time we get to a new bit, I look at it and think, "I am never going to get my tongue round that lot, much less remember it!" but each time, I do.
But now, it's getting a little more complicated. Now we're getting to hear about mutations, about how certain words cause the initial letter of the word following it to change to something else - quite often too!
Nouns, it seems,  are even more sneaky - they have genders, just as in French, German, etc, but you can bet your life they won't be the same ones.
Today our tutor, Helen, just mentioned in passing that, for some unknown and unfathomable reason, 'table' is masculine in north Wales but feminine in the south.
Definitely an idiosyncratic language... and I'm really enjoying it.
Dw i wedi ymddeol ond dw i'n gweithio fel cynghores a dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg.
How about that, then?


5 comments:

Yorkshire Pudding said...

I hope that you are being a good girl in class and paying attention to the teacher. You know what your last report said. You'll never make anything of your life if you don't work hard in lessons.

Shooting Parrots said...

Do they have transvestite tables in mid-Wales? Or would that be a Welsh Cross Dresser?

Jennytc said...

YP, the second word is 'off'!
SP, that would be telling... ;)

Sage said...

learning a local language is always fascinating and even the pronunciation can be different... I watched a bit of the national lottery awards, one of which went to a welsh place and she said thank you in welsh (Diolch yn fawr)which I almost didn't recognise as I was used to the harsher northern version. Someone described Cornish as welsh spoken with a south west accent..Meur ras

Jennytc said...

Very true, Sage. I am hoping that anyone I manage to speak to will speak very slowly and clearly to give me even a faint chance of understanding. ;)

Plaster board and dust

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